Welcome to the Aboriginal Art ProjectJoan Higgins
Art grades 9-12

Didactic

Must-Know Facts & Information

Coaching

Skills for Mastery

Seminar

Ideas and Values for understanding

• Historical information on Australian Aborigines, the oldest continuing culture on the earth.
• Dreamtime – a state of being that encompasses both the past and the future. Dreaming incorporates a time when Aboriginals believe that ancestral figures traveled the unformed earth.
• Painting style - Each dream painting relates to the personal and tribal. Patterns are made with dots and curving lines
• Art making- share with dreamtime and become one with the earth.
•Importance of ancestors. Only the initiated members of the artist’s tribe can fully understand the meaning and symbolism of a dream painting
•Importance of myth in subject matter





1.Understanding and applying media, techniques and processes.

3. Choosing and evaluating a range of subject matter, symbols and ideas.

4.Understand the visual arts in relation to history and cultures.

Aborigine
Dreamtime
Ancestors
Earth colors/ochre
X-ray art
Point-of-view
Color dot patterns
Organic patterns
Composition
symmetrical

Seminar art work to be discussed: Paddy J. Nelson, b.1919.,Burrowing Skink Dreaming 1987, Acrylic on canvas 60x48

“My father said to me, ‘Look my boy, it is your dreaming; it is a big thing. All dreamings come from there…something is there; we do not know what; but something.”- Aboriginal saying